No one uses the Manley side cutters? Wow, the small pair is wicked for the size. May be I'll just get the bigger sized ones. Not sure who made those originally, but I see lots of copies of those.
I've played with the VS reels and chatted with a couple of their guys at last yrs shows. I have a cnc machining back ground so I see things a bit differently than most folks. They lost $ on lots of little things like not farming out some of their smaller pieces and doing too much of their own hand labor in house. Man hours cost you the most $ and machine hrs are considerably less. Go price out blocks of 6061 aluminum and see if you want to take on the machining challenge.
NOT - I rather buy the reel if I wanted one......lol.
Sorry for side rambling. I wanted to visit VS when they were in Hopedale, but didn't get around to it before all this craziness.
I appreciate the comments about the pliers. I purchased a pair of the long Shimano titanium coated ones last yr via mail order and when cut the zip ties off I could see there was rust already on the pliers (from being in the containers going over the ocean I assume....lol). I just use them at work - they are some alloy so they are much lighter than a regular pair of the same size.